19.04.2017

Before .nz released second level domain names, such as name.nz, in September 2014 they held an exhaustive consultation process on the best way to release them. One of the rules was that where the same third level domain was registered in more than one second level, such as name.co.nz and name.org.nz, the registrants were to work it out among themselves as to who would end up with the second level domain.

Some registrants of these conflicted domain names still haven’t resolved the conflict or even expressed an interest as to whether they’d like the second level domain. So the .NZ Domain Name Commission has revised its process, not the policy, in this area following a consultation.

The timeframe now for registrants to lodge a preference as to who gets the conflicted domain names has been shortened from 12 to 6 months with the new date being 18 October 2017. And should a registrant involved fail to lodge a preference then they will lose the right to the second level domain.

Should none of the registrants express interest in the conflicted domain name, then it will be released for registration on a first come, first served basis. And what happens if more than one party is eligible for the second level domain and they can’t resolve the conflict? Nobody gets it and it remains unavailable.

Currently there are over 116,000 second level .nz registrations compared to around 491,000 for .co.nz (the largest second level domain) out of 675,000 .nz registrations in total.

In other .nz news, the Domain Name Commission has launched its fifth review of its WHOIS policy. Following its fourth review, the policy was amended to allow individual registrants a privacy option. This would mean only an individual registrant’s name, email address and country would be displayed. The fifth review is seeking comments on introducing a broader Registrant Privacy Option, defining a process for requesting withheld data and amending the reference to “WHOIS” to “domain name registration data query (Query)”. Submissions close on 9 May.